It had been a quick rough grasp, bringing to Lady Phayre a new
conception of handshakes. It had not been violent like that of certain
per-fervid ones among her friends, forcing the rings into her delicate
flesh; but her hand tingled, and the tingling mounted her arm and died
away in a flutter in her bosom. Involuntarily she held up the hand in
front of her, saw that it trembled a little, and then laid it against
her cheek. A swift consciousness of the act brought a flush to her face.
But instead of drawing away her hand, she moved it slightly so that her
lips touched the palm, and there it stayed while she gave herself up to
a day-dream. And the smile rose into her eyes which no one has ever seen
in a woman’s, except when she has been taken unawares; which only comes
when she is alone, and is looking half tremulously, half amusedly into
her heart.
Gradually, however, the smile grew dim with a gathering moisture. She
was not a woman to whom tears came readily. She was surprised and glad.
They were a delicate test of the sincerity of her emotion. A drop hung
on the lower lid for a moment and fell upon the back of her fingers,
losing itself among the rings. Her heart melted over Goddard. Failure
for him was different from failure for other men. The wherefore of this
conclusion she did not argue out, content with the assurance of its
truth in her own mind. The great battle, into whose side-issues she
herself had been drawn, was lost. She was sorry. But she had spoken
truly when she had said she was sorrier for him. The fallen cause
was merged in the defeated man. Her thoughts drifted towards plans of
consolation.
It was very still, silence only broken by the whirr of the little
leaping flame jets in the fire. The white cat rose from the hearthrug,
stretched himself, stole noiselessly over the pile carpet to the centre
of the room, and then, after a dubious wag of the tail, returned to
slumber. Lady Phayre did not change her attitude. Her occupation
engrossed her. She was compounding balm for Goddard--a new and wondrous
panacea, whose secret she had just discovered--an extract of many
feminine simples as old as the leaves on the Tree of Knowledge.
The sudden opening of the door caused her to start with a foolish hope
that it might be Goddard returning. But the neat maid-servant, in her
subdued voice, announced Mr. Gleam.
He came forward eagerly, his dry equable face glowing with excitement.
“Have you seen Goddard?”
He was too preoccupied with his business even to linger his usual moment
over her finger-tips.
“He has been here. Why do you want him?” The question was in a breath
with the reply. Something had happened. She caught Gleam’s excitement,
half rose in her chair, and looked up at him anxiously.
“To tell him some news. Great news. Glorious news. I am the only one who
has got it. The enemy have been weakening all the time--a rift
within their lute. Rosenthal has backed out. Cleaver & Flyte are in
a panic--Rosenthal was behind them, you know. The others can’t stand
alone. It’s utter rout!”
“But it’s too late!” exclaimed Lady Phayre, with a ring of dismay in her
voice. “Haven’t you heard?”
“It isn’t. Not yet,” replied Gleam animatedly. “The managers won’t
declare till to-morrow morning--unless they are fools. But I have
more precise news still. You did not let me finish,” he laughed
apologetically. “They will give in all along the line if the men hold
out another four-and-twenty hours.”
“They must hold out,” cried Lady Phayre. “Oh, why isn’t Goddard there?”
“Better he should be here--if I could only get at him. Wiring couldn’t
have been definite enough. It’s not safe. Let me track him down, and off
he goes by the midnight train, or the newspaper train, and then----”
“He will win,” cried Lady Phayre exultantly.
“Of course. Come, see, conquer. As easy as lying. That is why I have
killed three cab horses under me to find him. I was in despair. I
knew he had left Ecclesby. At his house they assured me he was not
in London--did not expect him for a couple of days. No news at the
clubs--his offices. Then I came here. Thank Heaven, he is in London, at
any rate. If I can’t find him, some one else will have to go down.”
“And Goddard lose his triumph after all? He must be found. Besides, they
would not believe any one else.”
“I was thinking of going myself, _en dernier ressort_,” said Gleam
rather quizzically, “just as I am. I think they would believe me.”
“So would the masters. A member of Parliament in dress clothes going
about at six o’clock in the morning! Besides, you would catch your death
of cold.”
She laughed playfully, but she was trembling all through with
suppressed joy. The knuckles of her hand, that held a futile ball of a
handkerchief, were white. There was a little pause. She looked on the
ground for a moment, then she lifted her long lashes, and regarded him
half-shyly, with a smile playing round her lips.
“What would you say if I told you where you can find him?”
“Anything,” cried Gleam. “Where is he?”
“At the Midland Grand Hotel.”
She told the lie with astounding charm. He whipped up his hat from the
table and turned towards her.
“Why did I not come to you at once? You are not a woman, but an
Immortal. A crisis--a time of difficulty--and you come out of a rosy
cloud like an Homeric goddess.”
Lady Phayre smiled on him divinely. She held out her hand.
“I won’t keep you. I am as eager as you are.”
In another minute she heard the wheels of his departing cab in the
street below. She broke into a little ringing laugh: he had gone so
promptly and unquestioningly on his fool’s errand. A woman in an exalted
condition of mind has a queer sense of humour.
A wild fancy had seized her. It had grown into an irrepressible desire.
Her woman’s wit had worked swiftly. The lie had mounted to her lips on
wings of triumph, and spread radiance over her face. No wonder Gleam was
enraptured.
Women who are in the habit of throwing their caps over windmills find it
as monotonous as anything else after a time; but for one who has never
done it before, the act is accompanied with a rare exhilaration.
Lady Phayre had lived a bright but perfectly exemplary life. No breath
of scandal had ever rested upon her name. Sir Ephraim had cloyed her
with affection, and hitherto she had regarded amatory offerings with a
young confectioner’s serene indifference to puffs. If she dared now and
then to flout at convention, she was only exercising the privileges of
her position. No one could find a word to say against it. To have driven
to a politician’s house at night to deliver a political message was a
commonplace of propriety. But to take the message of victory to the man
she loved, knowing, with a thrill that quivered from her feet to her
hair, that the message would contain also the openly avowed gift of
herself--that set matters on a totally different plane. It was wild,
daring, unutterably sweet. The breathless moment that followed the lie
was the supreme point of happiness in Lady Phayre’s life.
She went to a writing-table, took a sheet of the crested,
delicately-scented paper, and wrote a hurried line, which she enclosed
in an envelope and thrust in her corsage. Then she rang for her maid,
and in a few moments was speeding across London in a hansom cab. The
cold air caught her face, filling her with a joyous sense of vitality.
She pictured, glowingly, the little scene that would take place. First,
his look of wondering delight at her presence, then the illumination on
his face when she gave him her breathless message. There would be just
time to deliver it, if he was to catch the midnight train. The letter
she would slip into the letter-box. It would be found after she had
left. If it was forwarded to him the next day, so much the better.
She loved him. It was a new, wild sensation to her. The gradual drifting
towards the rapids had been pleasant, though not unaccompanied by
certain trepidations and misgivings. This evening had brought her to the
edge, and the swirl fascinated her. For once Lady Phayre had lost
her head. And yet there was method in her wildness. She felt herself
worshipped, longed for, saw the man standing in passionate helplessness
on the other side of the social gap between them. It was her prerogative
to stretch the bridge across. In the midst of all the excitement, Lady
Phayre was deliciously conscious that she was doing it gracefully.
Her mind was blissfully unheedful of the route. Crowded thoroughfares,
dreary squares, long, gaunt streets--it was all the same to her. She lay
back in a corner of the cab, felt the letter stiff against her bosom,
beneath her sealskin jacket, and surrendered herself to her
sensations. They were those of an angel of mercy committing a rapturous
indiscretion.
At last the cab stopped at the given number of the quiet street where
Goddard lived. Bidding the cabman wait, she ran up the steps and rang
the bell. For a moment she hesitated with the letter in her hand,
fingering it nervously. Then, with a little throb, half-joy, half-fear,
she thrust it into the letter-box.
A servant came to the door and stared at the visitor. Lady Phayre’s
heart beat so fast that she could scarcely speak.
“Mr. Goddard’s upstairs, ma’am. I’ll fetch him,” said the servant; and
she ran up the stairs, leaving Lady Phayre standing in the hall.
She was a slatternly slip of a girl, in a print dress. The thought of
men’s incapacity in the domestic economies brought a superior smile to
Lady Phayre’s lips. She forgave him, on account of his sex, for being
left to wait in a draughty passage. But the dining-room door was ajar,
showing a light within. There was no reason against her entering, her
hand was upon it, when it was suddenly opened wide, and, in the full
light appeared the figure of a woman with sodden features, dull eyes,
and loose, untidy hair, dressed in a dirty flannel dressing-gown.
For a second they stood watching one another. Then the woman made a
step, and reeled sideways against the wall. She was drunk.
“Who the -------- are you?” she cried in a thick voice.
Lady Phayre was transfixed with horror. She shrank back, just as Goddard
rushed down the stairs. He had heard his wife’s speech. It was an awful
moment. At the sight of him the woman cowered.
“Stay in that room!” he thundered at her; then he slammed the door, and
still gripping the knob, stood with livid features and heavily coming
breath, staring into Lady Phayre’s white face.
“You here? What madness brought you?” he said hoarsely.
The sound of his voice addressing her was an awakening shock to Lady
Phayre.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, the disgust and revolt of her soul finding its
only expression in an inarticulate cry. And then she instinctively fled
towards the street door.
But Goddard overtook her in two or three great strides. She shrank into
the corner, put up her hand as if he were about to touch her.
“Let me go. Don’t come near me. Don’t speak to me. It is horrible.”
“Yes, it’s horrible,” he replied fiercely. “But it is my curse, and not
my fault, that I have a wife like that.”
“Your wife, your wife?” she said in a queer, faint voice. “That--that
woman your wife?”
“You did not think it was my mistress?” he exclaimed with bitter
coarseness. “To come to _her_ after leaving you!”
She recovered her composure with a strong effort.
“I will trouble you to open that door for me.”
He slid back the latch, held the door open for her to pass out, followed
her, and, shutting it behind him, stood with her on the steps. Then,
before she had time to descend, he seized her by the wrist.
“What madness made you come to this house? Tell me.”
Her first impulse was to wrench herself free and rush down to the
waiting cab, so as to fly from the loathed spot, and be alone with her
sickening mortification. But he held her too firmly.
“Tell me,” he said again sternly. “You would not come here without some
good reason.”
“Let go my arm. You are hurting me.”
“Forgive me,” he said, in a softer tone, dropping her wrist. “The hell
of indoors followed me out here.”
Lady Phayre at that moment hated him intensely. If it had been a mere
personal service to him, rather than perform it she would have called to
her safe-conduct into the cab the policeman who was pacing the solitary,
windswept street. But she reflected on the gravity of the issue.
Mastering her repugnance, she told him in a few curt sentences the
object of her mission. The longing for escape tingled through every
fibre in her body. As soon as the last word of the hated task was
spoken, she shuddered, flew down the steps, and rushed into the cab.
At the door of Queen’s Court Mansions, after she had paid her fare, her
heart stood still with a sickening recollection. She had left the letter
behind in the box. For a moment she thought of driving back to claim it;
but that was impossible. She crawled up the stairs and went to bed, her
brain reeling with rage, disgust, and humiliation.
Goddard stood bareheaded on the steps till the cab had disappeared in
the darkness, and then let himself in with his latch-key. He went into
the dining-room. Lizzie, lying half asleep on the couch by the fire,
turned her glazed eyes towards him as he entered. Her hair was squalidly
loose, her face bloated, her figure shapeless, her dirty dressing-gown
half open, her stockings wrinkling around her ankles. The room smelt of
spirits; the furniture was awry; the table-cloth was askew, and on it
were crumbs of a half-eaten Bath bun, a dirty handkerchief, and a copy
of a penny novelette, lying open at a great stain of grease.
A wave of indescribable loathing passed through the man. A savage desire
leaped from his heart to snatch the sofa-cushion from under her and
stifle her with it as she lay there, but it ended in a great lump in his
throat.
“I told you to go to bed,” he said fiercely. “Go at once.”
She rose to her feet and staggered, unable to walk. If she had fallen to
the ground, Goddard felt that he could not have touched her. She dropped
back on the couch. He rang the bell and the girl appeared.
“Call cook and put your mistress to bed at once. I am going back to
Ecclesby to-night. I don’t know how long I shall be away. I shall wire
to Mrs. Smith to come here to-morrow.”
The girl went out to fetch the cook. Lizzie looked at him with stupid
gravity.
“Think I believe you’re a-going to Ecclesby? You’re going to that
Piccadilly Circus woman.”
Goddard sprang forward, caught her by the loose collar of her dressing
gown, and shook her till the stuff tore.
“Do you want me to kill you?” he said, between his teeth, glaring at
her.
She was frightened, and began to whimper.
Goddard stood for a moment looking at her. Then he passed his hand
through his hair in a passionate gesture.
“O God!” he cried, in a low, trembling voice, and then strode out of the
room.
He sought mechanically his still unpacked bag, his overcoat and
necessaries, and went out into the night. At St. Pancras Station he
found Gleam waiting on the platform. He was conscious of the Member
asking him for certain explanations concerning the Midland Grand Hotel
and Lady Phayre, and of listening to details of the leakage of secrets,
Rosenthal’s defection, to congratulations, encouragement, adieux as the
train moved off, but it was all a phantasmagoria in which his intellect
worked independently of himself. The glorious news he was carrying, the
certain victory that was to crown his hopes and ambitions, the thousands
of lives whose destiny he was bearing in his hands--all loomed like
vague shadows at the back of his consciousness. But his brain was on
fire with passionate love for Lady Phayre, and wild hatred of the woman
from whom he had just parted. If man ever carried the fires of hell in
his heart it was Goddard, that night, as he was on his way to realise
the first great ambition of his life.